I have contacted Jon to help with my blog with a post. He has accepted and now I have the oppurtunity to interview him and his busy life. Jon is the owner of FreelancFolder and SmartWealthyRich, 2 great blogs that have great valuable information.
I have been in contact with Jon in the past and we grew together as friends within the blogosphere. He has helped me with several issues on my blog, since I was a newbie prior (and still am), and he has taught me several things about blogging and provided his own personal thoughts and ideas on concepts of my own.
Let us start the interview!
Ian: Jon, please introduce yourself to my readers. Explaining how you started blogging and why.
Jon: Hey there, my name's Jonathan, I'm from Montreal, Canada, I started blogging in February this year (about 7 months ago). Honestly, back then I had no idea what blogging was about, but I've heard of something called WordPress, I wanted to start a new site, and I had a couple of domain names just sitting there, so I downloaded WP, installed it on www.smartwealthyrich.com, and voila, I started blogging, not knowing what it was about really, I just wanted to "try it".
Needless to say I learned whole bunch of things since. I'm probably the one who knows the least what he's doing, but I guess whatever it is I'm doing works out alright. I then started another blog, FreelanceFolder.com in July, which is about freelancing and entrepreneurship and running a small business.
Ian: You have recently started a new blog called “Freelance Folder.†What was the purpose of creating this blog? Or is it even a blog?
Jon: Yes FreelanceFolder is a blog, in fact it's a multi-author blog. I wanted to start another blog that would be more focussed than Smart Wealthy Rich (which is still, to this day, some sort of an experiment), and I didn't wanted to start a blog about "make money online" although it is certainly possible to run a profitable blog in that niche, I wanted something different.
I run this blog with the help of many other bloggers and entrepreneurs, and I've received guest posts from many other awesome writers. I'm also always looking for guest writers and contributors for this blog, I like the diversity of topics and what everybody brings to the table, the ideas. It's a lot of fun!
Ian: Jon from my experience working with you and from my readings you are a very caring giving person. Your about page accepts donations but is donated again to Kiva. With 2 popular blogs, how do you keep up with emails and contacts? Do you answer all emails? Do you help all that requests? Has your giving and helping others fill your personality as a person?
Jon: Well, I just like to give some back and I find Kiva is a great organization, I'm always willing to help other entrepreneurs, it's very important to me. I don't receive a lot of donations though, maybe because I don't advertise this a lot, but a part of my earnings goes to Kiva and some other charity organizations like the World Wildlife Foundation and others.
I do receive quite a lot of e-mails, I don't know how, but I manage to keep up haha! I reply to all e-mails, I try to reply within 2 days, but sometimes it takes a little longer, but yes I reply to all e-mails, unless I forgot some 🙂 I try my best to help with all the requests though, and I try to reply to almost every comment that are left on SmartWealthyRich. It happens quite often I will get e-mails from people asking me to help them out with their blog(s), so if I can, I'll help.
Ian: Jon I also noticed you have a personal blog at jonathan-phillips.com. is this your personal blog about your everyday life? It does veer off from your other 2 websites.
Jon: humm, to be totally honest, I've been wanting to turn this blog into some sort of an online portfolio for many months now, but haven't got around to do it yet. This blog was a static website before (before I discovered WordPress back in February).
I hope I will finish designing my portfolio soon, but it's not a priority right now, SmartWealthyRich and FreelanceFolder are taking a lot of my time already. This blog was in fact supposed to be a blog about my "everyday life" and about music and guitar, but I haven't updated it since July. Oh well 🙂
Ian: About your hair Jon. Do you think you will catch up to Yaro Starak hair style? Or do you think it is longer than his?
Jon: My hair is longer than Yaro's! Definitely! But he has more RSS subscribers, so it kinda balance things out. haha
Many time I've thought about cutting my hair, but I think it wouldn't be "me". Since I play guitar in an original rock/heavy band, and I'm the only one in the band that has long hair, I kinda have to keep it like that.
Ian: Lastly Jon, you play the guitar. Are you going to create a blog in regards to playing instruments or guitar? What other instruments do you play? And are you in a band?
Jon: I started playing guitar April 14 1994 (yep I remember the exact date). My main instrument is the guitar, but I also play a little piano and I remember clarinet from high school (if that counts).
Probably jonathan-phillips.com will be the home of some guitar videos or maybe the official blog for my band, I'm not sure about this yet. I've thought about starting a blog about music theory and guitar techniques though. I'm a guitar teacher, but I find it's easier to teach the guitar face to face. Editing videos and writing long tutorials on the topic didn't really appeal to me, I may change my mind eventually though.
What I learned from the Interview
Understanding what Freelance Folder is all about, a multi author blog. Gathering thoughts from other minds a like into one section. I also know that Jon is a caring person always looking to help others around him. Providing donations to Kiva and other organizations to help others in need.
Jon like others is the average person playing around in a rock band on his spare time. Keeping pleasure as pleasure and business as business, with a caring heart!
I also know Jon's hair will be in the line up of most "fluffed" hair, who will it be Yaro vs Jon!
